The Sex and Generative Organs of Plants. 275 



with the same process of thinning out, and the gradual 

 enlargement of a small granule within it. We may there- 

 fore say, with Schwann, that " a common principle of 

 development presides over all the elementary parts of 

 organized things." And the commencement of vegetable 

 formation under the influence of sex, appears to us only 

 as a higher form of the universal process of develop- 

 ment. At the same time we are only authorised to 

 recognise in the highest and most complete vital actions, to 

 which plants can raise themselves, that power, which forms 

 them according to a definite form, or if we choose so to 

 call it, the plastic soul. — Gelehrte Anseigeriy Miinchen, 

 Nos, 136, 137, 138. 



Correction of the erroneous doctrine that the Snow lies longer and 

 deeper on the Southern, than on the Northern aspect of the Hima' 

 layas. — By Capt. T. Hutton. 



My dear Sir,-— Previous to my ** Trip through Kunawar" in 

 1838, I had frequently heard it contended, that the snow lay longer, 

 deeper, and farther down on the southern exposure of the Himalaya, 

 than it was found to do on the northern aspect, and this doctrine 

 having been supported by more than one traveller into these regions, 

 has, I believe, at length been received by the scientific world as 

 absolute fact. You may therefore easily imagine my astonishment, 

 when crossing the higher Passes through Kunawur, Hungrung and 

 Pitti fvulgo Spittee,} I found the actual phenomena to be diametrical- 

 ly opposed to such a doctrine, and that the northern slopes invari- 

 ably carried more snow than the Southern exposure.* Not wishing 



* The error we believe originated in the reports of Captain Webb, who sur- 

 veyed the greater part of the Kemaon, and was adopted by Humboldt, in his 

 celebrated treatise on isothermal lines, who endeavoured to account for it, by the 

 supposed radiation of heat from the elevated plains of Thibet. We have been 

 long conscious of the error here so well pointed out by Captain Hutton, in common 

 with every one who visited the Himalayah.— Ed. 



